photo source: Independent 12/19/17
India's textbook conflict
Students are required to study history. Some find it fascinating; others see no value. The latter may be evidence that the history teaching profession has not provided students with the ‘meta questions’ of studying history: Why is there so much conflict over the way that the past is represented? Why do social movements and people in power battle over whose stories are told, and how? Does it really matter if we know about the past?
In this series of lessons, we examine a current conflict in India over what history textbooks include, and what they exclude, and how that debate connects to political trends with powerful consequences.
References: NY Times; NPR; Reuters; NY Review of Books
Students are required to study history. Some find it fascinating; others see no value. The latter may be evidence that the history teaching profession has not provided students with the ‘meta questions’ of studying history: Why is there so much conflict over the way that the past is represented? Why do social movements and people in power battle over whose stories are told, and how? Does it really matter if we know about the past?
In this series of lessons, we examine a current conflict in India over what history textbooks include, and what they exclude, and how that debate connects to political trends with powerful consequences.
References: NY Times; NPR; Reuters; NY Review of Books
Additional resources:
- A civilization as great as ours: click “Sons of the soil” and listen, or scroll down and click “Transcript” to read (On the Media podcast, 8/16/19)
- The Powerful Group Shaping The Rise Of Hindu Nationalism In India (National Public Radio. 5/3/19)
- India’s dangerous new curriculum (Alex Traub, New York Review of Books, 12/6/18) — this is a longer article
- New Delhis’ Demographic Designs in Kashmir (Foreign Policy, 8/16/19)
- Court backs Hindus on Ayodha... (NY Times 11/8/19)